Prota Ventures, a venture-building and early-stage investment firm with offices in Chicago, Seattle and Jacksonville, today announced the launch of Startup Rocket, an independent venture that is focused on providing founders with a better process for ideating and validating their startup, as well as the tools and resources necessary to build desirable products, accelerate growth, and land funding.

“Startup Rocket offers a framework that serves as a comprehensive and practical guide for bringing a company to life,” said Will Little, Managing Director of Prota Ventures. “The framework was developed based on decades of startup experience within the Prota Ventures team. It is designed to help founders save time and avoid the common mistakes that plague most early-stage startups.”

While oriented towards startups that are building a software product and aiming to raise capital, the framework has also proven to be extremely helpful for many different types of for-profit and non-profit ventures. It details the critical steps necessary to validate an idea, recruit a team, design and build a product, acquire customers, iterate toward Product-Market Fit, and successfully bootstrap or land funding.

“There are plenty of resources out there that cover the topics that founders need to know in theory, but practical guidance through the nuances of building a business is hard to find,” Little said. “Our goal is to help founders build upon the traditional business plan and ideation tools out there to focus on executing what matters – acquiring and retaining happy, paying customers.”

Founders provided with early admittance to Startup Rocket have benefited greatly from the access to the resources, team, and advisor network. Through Startup Rocket’s collaborative exchange, entrepreneurs can learn about best practices for navigating the chaos of startup operations and prep to land their first round of funding.

“Bringing an idea to life takes a small army, and even then, things slip through the cracks,” said Levina Li, Founder of IDE Group, and an early user of the Startup Rocket framework. “Startup Rocket keeps things focused and moving forward. Their framework and community are invaluable resources for any new team or company.”

“Building a startup is part science and part art,” said Troy Henikoff, Managing Director of TechStars Chicago and MATH Venture Partners. “While nothing is certain, there are things you can do to dramatically increase the probability of success, learning from mistakes others have made is one of the biggest. Startup Rocket provides a framework to take the best learnings from hundreds of startups and apply them to your business so that you can focus on innovation and creating a product that customers will love rather than re-inventing the wheel. Working with Startup Rocket will reduce time to market, decrease costs, and increase chances of success.”